Samsung unveils fast 950 Pro enterprise SSD

Samsung 950 Pro SSD

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Samsung unveiled its 950 Pro solid state drive in Seoul, Korea at the company's annual SSD Global Summit. The 950 Pro drive utilizes a slim M.2 form factor for portability and energy efficiency, designed for notebooks and mobile workstations.

Samsung claims that the 950 Pro SSD is the first Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) M.2 form factor with vertical NAND (vNAND) technology designed for consumers that supports the PCIe 3.0 interface.

The 950 Pro is available in either 512GB or 256GB capacities. The larger 512GB storage drive delivers up 2,500MB and 1,500 speeds for read and write, respectively. Random read performance up to 300,000 IOPS, and write speeds are up to 110,000 IOPS. The drive uses Samsung's second generation MLC V-NAND 32-layter 128GB die architecture.

Performance gains

These read speeds have increased by 4.5 times, with write speeds increasing by 2.8 times, according to Samsung's benchmarks.

The NVMe driver will support Windows 7, 8 and 10.1. Drivers will be available shortly for Linux and Windows Server, Samsung said in a presentation.

Samsung said that it will make a 1TB capacity in the M.2 format, but did not give a timeframe. The 850 Pro M.2 will be available in 1TB capacities starting in 2016.

Reliability

Designed for business applications, Samsung offers a five-year limited warranty. The drives can be used in temperature extremes between 0 and 70 degrees Celcius.

Additionally the drive can handle shock up to 1,500G/0.5ms and vibrations up to 20G.

The drives will be available in October. The 256GB version is expected to retail for $199 (£128, AU$279) and the 512GB version will retail for $349 (£224, AU$489). Samsung says that the new drives delivers performance, capacity and value.